Page 60 of Last Breath

She shook her head. ‘You’re not getting out of this.’

‘Can’t I just vomit on your shoes instead? Then we’ll be even.’

‘Keep talking, Randall.’ She stalked off again, her stride confident, but inside she wasn’t at all.

He let out a long breath as they reached a pedestrian light, waiting until the people in front of them moved off in different directions before he spoke again. ‘I met a girl, at school, here.’

Nella tried to keep her expression neutral. ‘What was her name?’

‘Emily.’

‘Boring name.’

‘Am I telling the story, or are you?’

‘Sorry.’

‘It was your classic teenage love-at-first-sight.’ He said it with an unnatural sourness in his voice. ‘We were going to be together forever. No one had ever been in love like we were.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Nella nodded, feeling about eighty years old.

‘Yeah, well, that never-ending love lasted four months.’

‘Practically a lifetime when you’re sixteen.’

‘For me itwasa lifetime.’ He jabbed his elbow into the button at the next set of pedestrian lights. ‘It was the longest I’d been in the same foster home and the same school. She lived a few houses down and so we saw each other every day. I’d sneak out the window to meet her at night like a fucking American teen movie character. I asked her to go with me to the school ball.’

‘She said “yes”, right?’ For some reason, Nella’s heart clenched at the thought of Jett being turned down by Emily.

He nodded. ‘My foster dad, Nigel, had helped me get a job as a dishwasher at the local Chinese restaurant, a block from here. I worked every night and every weekend to pay for a tux.’ He pulled at his top button like it had started to choke him. ‘It was a decent state school in an okay area, so the kids went all out. The boyfriends were expected to buy corsages, pay for a limo, all those sorts of things.’

‘Did you save enough?’

‘Yeah. I ordered the most expensive limo I could find, and my foster mum took me to her friend’s flower shop to get a corsage – I had no idea what a corsage was, or that I was meant to get one, but thankfully she did.’

Nella felt like she was riding a rollercoaster with no harness.

‘The evening of the ball rolls around and I’m in the limo, pulling up to her house.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Tux on, corsage sweating in a plastic box in my hands. I was shaking like crazy.’

Nella swallowed, her eyes locked on his face, watching for the warning signs, for when it was going to go bad.

‘Knocked on the door. No answer. Rang the doorbell like five million times. I didn’t have a phone – we’d mainly just talked on instant messenger on the computer. Eventually someone opens the door and it’s this big, burly guy who I figure must be Emily’s dad. I say,Good evening sir, my name’s Jett, I’m here to pick up Emily.And he looks at me like this.’ Jett swivelled to Nella, his brow furrowed, hands on his hips, jaw clenched. ‘And he says,Like hell you are, and slams the door in my face.’

‘Jett.’ Nella didn’t know how her voice was working. She reached out but he kept walking, her fingers grasping at the sweaty, empty night air.

‘Limo driver took me home, didn’t let me pay him the rest of the fee, which was something at least. Nigel spoke to the driver before he took off. Then Nigel goes all cold and quiet and just tells me to get in the car. He drives us over to Emily’s house and tells me to wait. Her dad comes out and when he sees me in the car, he tries to slam the door again but Nigel shoves it back open and they start yelling at each other. I put headphones on so I couldn’t hear, but it must have been bad because one of the neighbours came over. When I saw her, I pulled off the headphones and wound the window down and I caught the end of what Emily’s dad was saying.’

Nella’s heart shivered against her sternum.

‘I can’t remember the exact phrasing, but I remember his last three words.Deformed Centrelink trash.’

Her heart stopped beating. Air wouldn’t enter her lungs.

‘DCT,’ she whispered, blood pooling between her ears. Without thinking, without asking, she reached out to his left arm where she knew those letters were inked across his bicep. ‘Why would you mark yourself with that bastard’s words?’

Jett swallowed, his gaze on her hand. ‘I didn’t want to forget.’

‘Jett, you can’t ...’